Dying for Daylight isn’t just another paint-by-numbers hidden object adventure whose details you won’t remember in a month. It’s got a style all its own, and a juicy story that will keep you interested until the end… or at least, the end of this chapter.
Dying for Daylight isn’t just another paint-by-numbers hidden object adventure whose details you won’t remember in a month. It’s got a style all its own, and a juicy story that will keep you interested until the end… or at least, the end of this chapter.
The main character of Dying for Daylight is the one and only Dahlia, a sexy and sardonic vampire who sprung from the imagination of Charlaine Harris, the best-selling author whose novels inspired the True Blood TV show.
In the game, Dahlia’s boss sends her to New Orleans to investigate rumors of a potion that’s supposed to allow vampires to walk in the sun unharmed. Dahlia is more excited by the fact that such a potion would allow her to visit trendy Madison Avenue shops in broad daylight without burning to a crisp. When Dahlia arrives at New Orleans’ Vampire Quarter, or “VQ,” she finds that several of the vampires who were connected to the potion have been murdered by an unknown faction who wants the potion’s secret for themselves.
The game plays out like a typical hidden object adventure as Dahlia hunts down clues about the potion by investigating the streets of New Orleans and beyond. Dahlia can travel freely between scenes, and select which districts to visit from an overhead map. She’ll collect inventory items to help solve puzzles, and frequently zoom in on special hidden object areas that yield key items.
Dying for Daylight is highly polished, with gorgeously-rendered scenes, interesting music, fully voice-acted dialog, and cutscenes that unfold by way of dynamic comic book panels. The puzzles and minigames are refreshingly unorthodox too, like dressing Dahlia in various disguises and helping the ghost of an Elvis impersonator hunt down a jar of sequins for his outfit.
The game’s hint system is particularly well thought out. Using the Hint button during a hidden object search reveals an item on the list, which is the norm, but if a Hint is used outside the HOG scenes you can actually choose which topic to ask for a hint about. This avoids the frustration of being given the same vague and unhelpful hint over and over again to a problem.
It’s unlikely that you’ll need to rely on hints that often, however, since the puzzles aren’t terribly difficult. In fact, they often rely on backtracking to places you’ve already visited to see if a new hidden object hotspot has appeared, which seems a little arbitrary.
Dying for Daylight is divided into four episodes, with each new episode beginning with a handy recap of what happened before. The fourth episode ends with a cliffhanger ending that advertises an upcoming Chapter II – so you’ll have to be patient if you want to see how Dahlia’s adventure ends. Something tells us it’ll be worth the wait.
